legislation suggests itself as a feasible solution. There can be no excuse for widely different methods of classification and rate schedules when the same commodities are concerned; nor should a multiplicity of reports be called for. A uniform rule of assessment and taxation is unquestionably desirable.

Railway legislation in the United States lacks adjustment, the machinery for making adjustments, and the machinery for administering with efficiency the laws supposed to be in force. The railway business is complex. It ministers to manifold wants. It has many interests. The law should somewhere delegate power which can be exercised with discretion by authorized administrative agents, rather than prescribe rigid rules for traffic matters which may require one type of decision to-day and the opposite type to-morrow. The easiest and perhaps the best way of providing the elements of elasticity and adjustment, which are now so generally lacking, is to invest a competent authority with ample discretionary powers.

The lack of elasticity in railway legislation is also illustrated by the many constitutional provisions which have been incorporated in the constitutions of various states. The chapter on Constitutional Provisions illustrates this. There are certain general and fundamental principles which can perhaps be incorporated in constitutions to advantage; such as, eminent domain, publicity, and equality of treatment. But rigid provisions relat

ing to the long and short haul, discriminations, and classification are likely to hinder that free development of traffic arrangements which the railway business requires. There are circumstances under which a greater charge for a shorter haul, over the same line, in the same direction is justifiable and necessary. There are discriminations which

are not unjust. State classifications, unless they are essentially alike, if not identical, except in matters of commodity tariffs, are likely to obstruct progress toward a uniform national classification. Constitutional amendments are not easy to secure, and the less our constitutions are concerned with such changeable matters, the better will schemes of public regulation achieve their ends.

CHAPTER III

FOREIGN SIDE-LIGHTS 1

In these times of commercial expansion and the establishment of more far-reaching and complex international relations a survey of foreign experience is especially appropriate. The railway as an institution is everywhere the same. As an industry it presents characteristics which are in many respects different from those common to other industries. These peculiarities of the railway business have been so often pointed out that it is not necessary to repeat them here. Railway legislation, like legislation in other domains of the industrial world, must bear definite relations to the business treated in such laws, and the fact being indisputable that the intrinsic nature of railway enterprise is everywhere the same, the corollary must go unchallenged that railway legislation must, in its essential features, bear a corresponding degree of similarity and identity. It is only in secondary and local characteristics that we find differences of importance in a study of the railways of different countries; hence it follows that only in

1 Consult Part V of the author's "Report on Railway Regulation," United States Industrial Commission Reports, Vol. IX, p. 943.

such secondary matters should laws aiming at the control of railways differ in the substantial elements of their contents. The experiences of foreign countries have frequently been brushed aside on the assumption that whatever success or failure may have characterized foreign effort, nothing of vital importance to American states could possibly be discerned therein because of differences in conditions which, it is alleged, exist between the United States and the respective foreign countries. No one will be inclined to deny that certain important differences do exist, but the position can be successfully maintained that, so far as railways are concerned, these differences do not, as a rule, touch upon the essential features of the railway problem, and that along the large lines of industrial growth and development every important modern nation is cosmopolitan; that is, modern social and economic conditions have the world over become more and more alike, and, as this similarity increases, the need for similar legislation in all the different countries becomes increasingly urgent.

Railway charters-using this term in the sense of special legislation, as well as grants of railway charters under general laws are essentially alike the world over so far as the great nations are concerned. In all the different countries railway charters bear upon them the marks of lineal descent from early English charters, which in turn were copied directly from the charters granted to

canal and road companies. This similarity between railway and macadam or plank road charters can be readily detected in our laws. Many common road charters are identical in language with contemporary railway charters, the only differences lying in a few things peculiar to road companies, such as the smaller size of shares, provisions on toll gates, the use of the road by drovers, etc. Were one to take out of a railway charter and a common road charter clauses relating directly to these topics, it would probably be impossible to determine whether a certain charter had originally been granted to a common road or a railway company. Certain archaic features which were embodied in the Liverpool-Manchester charter may be discerned in charters of different states in the United States, as well as in those of foreign countries. One of the most common of these is the right of different shippers to use the same track. One of the most serious objections brought against some of the early railway projects was the impossibility of using ordinary coaches and vehicles in the transportation of persons and property over railways. Inventors during the earlier decades of the nineteenth century devised contrivances by which carriages could be used on both common and rail roads. These provisions were inserted in some cases for the purpose of reserving to the state certain rights which it might otherwise find difficult to assert. It was thought that. the state, or a person or persons authorized to do